JD? Bye
[NY Post] President Donald Trump has it entirely right: The days for seeking "a deal with Iran" indeed "have long since passed."
Tehran refuses to back off what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls its "outrageous and ridiculous" demands, such as insisting it be handed a stronger position — including the right to toll Strait of Hormuz traffic — than it had before Operation Epic Fury kicked off.
So the prez will stick with the embargo and other sanctions to keep choking Iran’s economy, leaving it unable to significantly reconstitute its nuclear program, and wait — with the option of other combat operations where appropriate.
Some see this as a slap at Vice President JD Vance, who (according to Turkish officials) had been reaching out to Tehran for fresh high-level talks.
But that’s not how Trump framed it in his Truth Social post Thursday: Rather, he just sees the veep’s anti-fraud work (tackling "large scale criminal activity") as far more productive, recovering billions for the taxpayers, than wasting time on Iran outreach.
| True. Also, his negotiations killed time until the elections were over without doing anything so silly as committing America to anything, so they achieved President Trump’s purpose, no matter what the vice president thought he was doing. |
After all, Tehran torpedoed Vance’s last deal, this summer’s Memorandum of Understanding, by attacking ships in the Gulf; the president won’t be played for a sucker again.
Vance wasn’t wrong to say the war was a big reason for Republicans’ wipeout in the midterms, the prez has noted — but Trump has also declared he’d do it again, because (as he’s said consistently for decades) Iran can’t be allowed to go nuclear.
One White House official tells The Post that the post was a message to Iran, not Vance: "The Iranians should understand that the president is in the dominant position and able to exercise real strategic patience here"; if Trump "ever sees a smart deal worth looking at, he’ll send the VP to get it done."
Tehran may try waiting Trump out, in hopes Democrats use their coming control of Congress to somehow force him to surrender — but Dems surely won’t want to hand control of Hormuz, and a lasting stranglehold over world oil markets, to the "Death to America" crew.
Iran’s rulers need to give up their crazy demands, or their country will keep falling apart around them.
Trump says Gulf allies urged restraint on Iran, admits war hurt Republicans in midterms
[Jpost] In an interview, Trump said Gulf states had urged him to delay further strikes on Iran, acknowledged the war's political cost, and discussed Obama and his plans for a Democratic-controlled Congress.
"We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"I could end it immediately," he said.
"At the request of the nations that I’m looking to protect. We are doing it a little bit longer way, a little bit more civilly."
Trump then identified the countries that had asked him to exercise restraint.
"Saudi Arabia has asked me to please just let it be the way it is now for a while because they’re disintegrating," he said, referring to the Iranians.
"Qatar, if you look at that. Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain. All of them would rather, would much prefer the waiting period."
Trump acknowledged that he was not entirely convinced the delay was the right course.
"So they’ve asked me to do that and I’m doing that. I’m not sure I agree with it, but we’ve taken them largely out."
Asked whether he would already have intensified the military campaign if not for the requests from regional countries, Trump answered in the affirmative.
He also explicitly included Israel among the countries the United States was seeking to protect.
"Because the people that we’re looking to protect, and that includes Israel, the people that we’re looking to protect, which is basically the Middle East," he said.
However, unlike the Gulf states he specifically named, Trump did not say that Israel had requested a delay in further strikes.
# id) ?>
|
